After so many years of playing the gentlemanly, upper crust Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammer is often thought of as a class act. But as his bitter split and subsequent custody battle with third wife Camille has proved, art doesn't always imitate life.

On Thursday, the actor had a four-letter-filled temper tantrum following an appearance on the Australian talk show "Sunrise," hurling abuse and insults at the program's producer, reports the Herald Sun.

The reason? Grammer didn't appreciate that the show ran clips of him in happier times with Camille during her first season of self-involvement on "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," a gig he urged her to take.

"In my mind [the show] was my parting gift to her," he explained during the sit-down, after being asked if it was tough for his private life to be played out in public. "It was a very difficult marriage and a very difficult decade. I thought, 'So long, here's a present for you.'"

(Kelsey probably should have clued Camille in to this plan, because she reportedly found out that their 13-year marriage was over from a mutual friend who'd seen him with Kayte Walsh. They were married just weeks after his divorce from Camille was finalized.)

Kelsey was seething after the "Sunrise" appearance, and he reportedly called one of producers to take him task for airing the footage.

"You are a vile person ... a sick dog," he is quoted as raging. "Your life must be tragic. ... I feel sorry for you."

Grammer, for his part, has no intention of apologizing for the rant.

"My outburst was deserved," he said of the "unfortunate incident" (via the Sydney Morning Herald). "I won't be doing [the 'Sunrise' show] again."

The feeling is mutual: "Sunrise" says it won't be inviting Grammer back.

Meanwhile, his rep adds to Rumor Fix, "The 'Sunrise' show thought it was appropriate to show clips of 'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' with Camille commenting on Kelsey. This was done in front of Kelsey's wife Kayte. Kelsey felt that was not only rude, but out of line."

As for life with Walsh, it's been "eye-opening," Grammer gushes to the Courier-Mail.

"It's a lot simpler than I thought it should be or could be, and love doesn't have to be so difficult and the relationship doesn't have to be so tortured," he says. "I knew I didn't want to remain in the life I had made. These things happen. I regret hurting anybody but also it probably would have hurt more people to stay where I was, and it had a more profound impact, and so it all had to happen the way it happened."